The present invention relates to electrofluidic and electrowetting display pixels, electrofluidic and electrowetting displays, and methods of operating electrofluidic and electrowetting display pixels.
Electrowetting is a highly attractive modulation scheme for a variety of optical applications. For example, electrowetting has been used to provide optical switches for fiber optics, optical shutters or filters for cameras and guidance systems, optical pickup devices, optical waveguide materials, and video display pixels. Electrowetting has also found application in lab-on-chip devices, primarily in the form of digital droplet-driven flow.
Despite the numerous commercial applications and a large body of on-going research, nearly all conventional electrowetting-based devices require a constant application of voltage to hold a polar fluid in a particular geometry. These devices are not ‘bistable,’ that is to say, when the voltage is removed, the fluid is free to return to a spherical geometry along all non-confined fluid surfaces.
What is needed is an advanced electrowetting or electrofluidic display technology that is suited to more advanced control of colored polar fluid geometry and flow for display applications.